Cannibalism may have looked different then

Colin Barras thinks it paradoxical that Neanderthals with a largely vegetarian diet may have been eaten by cannibals (11 March, p 9). There have been various reasons and targets for cannibalism.

Forty years ago, an old man living among swamps in southern New Guinea commented to me that “if you eat a diet of sago every day, then meat is welcome, including people”. He said that cannibalism had ceased, but in his youth, early last century, the typical occasional victim was an unrelated woman or child on their own, not warriors killed in battle. Cannibalism may seem unpalatable to people now, but Neanderthals subsisting on wild plants and fungi may have viewed strangers as desirable meat.